Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The Thing About Me and Adrenaline

For those of you who haven't clued in - I'm crazy! No, seriously. I suffer from a clinical mental disorder. I have OCD, as well as accompanying debilitating social anxiety disorder (we're investigating if it's a product of my OCD or a separate condition). Alongside that I've had to deal with depression, and self-harm (moderate cutting and dermatillomania - ie obsessive skin picking). Because my best friend also suffers from a mental disorder, we decided to vlog about it, and our experiences. We've had a very positive response so far, until today when someone decided to be very accusatory and a total know-it-all because he happens to suffer from something that I mentioned. Rather than say what he didn't like, he (paraphrasing here) said that we aren't qualified to talk about mental illness, and his is more difficult to deal with than ours.

That upset me. Immensely. I can take constructive criticism. I can respond well to that, and figure out how to adjust it when people tell me what I did wrong. Instead, he belittled our efforts to provide a positive space for other people going through similar things to what we are. We weren't at all trying to say that we know everything. That couldn't be farther from the truth. In the context of the video, I simply mentioned that borderline personality disorder is an example of mental illness, and that people are often misdiagnosed as bipolar when they have bpd, which means that they aren't necessarily given proper treatment. Which is bad. I was more trying to bring more awareness to bpd (which is often very overlooked, sadly), but I suppose my intentions were misunderstood. Now I'm fretting that I've done something wrong and also very angry that someone would have the audacity to be so cruel about it. I checked out this gentleman's channel, and he seems to discuss bpd in all his videos, presumably to raise awareness, much the way we are (although for us in a more general way right now). It's like he thinks we're enemies when were working towards a common goal - showing that there are others out there going through things and that sometimes life is tough. I get the feeling he's the sort who blames everything on his illness, and that the world hates him. Sometimes you just have to go through it and make the best out of it. Be someone with and illness, don't let it define you. It's only a part of the bigger picture, and it's all about what you make of it. My friend and I are turning it into an opportunity for us to bond, and to hopefully help others.

The side effect of me being so antsy about this has to do with adrenaline. When I get agitated, my flight response goes into overdrive and I shake uncontrollably, get chills and have difficulty breathing. It also usually leaves me exhausted, but unable to sleep for a very long time and with a horrible headache. Basically, in his search for conflict, the lovely composer63 has left me extremely ill, but I'm sure he's sleeping just fine. In the future, the folks at luneverse (our channel) shall just delete those comments if they aren't polite.

1 comment:

  1. I have a very old problem from childhood that I never be able to completely cope with that. Maybe Shame! I have learnt many books, tried many personal development programs, learnt about many spiritual concepts. Still eager to learn and ry whatever I can do to solve it. I think the schicology science is in its infancy.

    I had a friend who I talked to more than a year, for couple of hours everyday about all sort of psychology/mind topics. and last week, we had to cut our line of communication, because her psychoanalysis believed she didn't share everything with him anymore. We unbelievable learnt from each other and improved.

    We don't talk anymore and no one around me has any idea about such topics. Its like I am talking in another language. I found this blog coincidently.

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